


Meet me in the middle of the air

by crimsonepitaph



Series: Soldiers Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Heavy Angst, M/M, Unconsciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12153993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonepitaph/pseuds/crimsonepitaph
Summary: Jensen's life hangs in the balance, and Jared tries his damnedest not to unravel. Picks up afterCarry That Weight.





	Meet me in the middle of the air

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's note #1:** Huuge thank you to borgmama1of5, who makes writing so fun!
> 
>  **Author's note #2:** Title is a lyric from the song "In My Time of Dying", Led Zeppelin. 
> 
> **Author's note #3:** Fear not, Jensen POV will come.

_“Jared…”_

_He shakes his head. He can’t._

_He gets up from the couch. He paces._

_He can’t hide. Dr. Cortese – she’s not – she sees through him. Through all that Jared wants to be, and all the things he isn’t._

_And it scares him shitless. Coldness drips down his spine, hands and fingers tremble at his side. He can’t look at her. He can’t look at anyone, only inside himself, at the monster of his own creation, at the part of himself so deep, so dark he can’t bear for it to ever see the light._

_“Jared, you have to let it out. Until then, all we’re doing is planting flowers on an empty grave.”_

_He raises his head. He doesn’t understand._

_“Leaving flowers – it’s nice. Comforting. But the horror of what happened to the body remains. In the corners of the world where not even a corpse would be entitled to peace of mind.”_

_She stops, searches Jared’s face._

_She’s learned what cards to play._

_It’s not just his hands anymore – every inch of Jared’s body is cold, waiting for warmth that will never come._

_“You know there’s more. Sergeant…Jared…you’ve just dipped your toes in these waters. To heal – to go forward – you need courage. Maybe more than you’ve ever shown.”_

_Standing at six foot four, looking at Cortese’s tiny frame sitting in her desk chair, he should feel intimidating. He should feel big, powerful, in control of the situation._

_And yet Jared can’t remember a time when he felt so small and so nakedly exposed as she peels him down, layer by layer, burning thought by burning thought._

_Courage._

_But all Jared is now is afraid._

_Afraid he’s not the man he was. Afraid he loved Jensen too much. Afraid if he loses Jensen, he isn’t any good to anyone._

 

_~_

 

_The damage…it’s extensive. We’ve done the best we could, but –_

It plays in Jared’s head, again and again, jolts him to the corners of his mind whenever he lets his guard down. He hears the doctor _–_ and he discards that pronouncement in the two seconds it takes the doctor to give a programmed sympathetic look and walk away from the human train wreck Jared is after seeing Jensen in the ICU.

Jared assesses Jensen’s form, trying to find something to hang on to. His desperate imagination supplies the missing pieces of the too-still tableau. Jensen's thoughts, his will, his strength – all pushing against the inevitable. Against nature. 

He is painfully conscious about what could – or _should_ happen, by all laws of the universe and medicine. But Jared…Jared has never given up on a fight. He’s the guy who will always see the impossible and make it happen, whatever crazy sacrifice required be damned. 

But the problem is _he_ can't do anything now. He sits in Jensen's room, alternately counting and recounting Jensen's freckles, remembering the sources of all the scars _–_ Jensen had acquired a new set on his left hand on the mission before last _–_ and badgering nurses, doctors, the entire hospital staff into making care of Jensen their priority. 

That’s all he can do.

When he’s not at the hospital, Jared runs. He does it out of habit, and he does it because by the time he finishes, he can't breathe anymore, and his thoughts are buried in exhaustion, and it seems like a normal day, expecting Jensen to come home again. That illusion holds just until he’s back in the too quiet house, alone.

He goes to work, too, because on Drill Sergeant Padalecki’s file is written _property of the fucking army_ – and because a piece of him still cares, still needs to know that his soldiers will know how to survive. It's his duty, and while it may not be as exciting as saving the world one bullet at a time – like he used to – saving _these_ boys is his job now. 

Through it all, a dull ache travels with his body, _inside_ him, doesn’t let him sleep or eat.  

So, Jared spends all his spare time watching Jensen, willing him to fight, clinging to the edges of the bed rail with white knuckles and closing his eyes, waiting – waiting for Jensen’s voice to bring him to the light again.

 

~

 

Jared loses the rhythm. The sound of boots hitting the ground, that pendulum inside his head he’s always heard, comforting, precise, and, above all, familiar. But it’s off.

“Ford, Everett – drop and give me twenty. _Now!_ ” Jared yells, scaring the soldiers out of their run.

Everett turns, stands at attention. “Sir?”

“You need me to draw it? Count it on my fingers? What? Drop, and give me twenty – NOW.”

His voice gets deeper, harsher as the words roll off his tongue. He signals the rest of the group to go ahead.

Jared fights to get himself back _here_. He balls his hands into fists, presses until his fingernails draw blood.

He shouldn’t be seeing Jensen’s closed eyes. His unmoving lips. The paleness of his body, the stillness of his hands…

Jensen’s embedded in his skin, just like the cadence of the boots hitting the ground.

For a moment Jared is gone.

The young soldier looks confused and pissed, but doesn’t say another word, just drops, counts out loud.

_One._

_Two._

“Everett, Ford, twenty more if you can’t tell me what you did wrong.”

Another day, Jared’s voice might have had a hint of playfulness. That anticipation of building up to the punch line. The satisfaction of when they _get_ it, when they understand. Not now.

_Three._

_It doesn’t change a thing, does it?_

_Five._

_We stay the same._

_Eight. Nine. Fifteen_

_You and I. You win, Jensen, every time._

“Well, soldiers?” Jared asks, walking next to Ford and bending down. He holds himself a few inches from the back of Ford’s head – where Jared knows he can feel it. This how Jared sees what the kid is made of.

Jared’s _here_. His body tells him so. His mind –  

“ _Ford_ –“ Jared yells, making the kid flinch at the sound, “Tell me. Now.”

“S-sir,” he stutters. “I don’t know, sir.”

He demands another twenty. Ford struggles on. Everett, too, beads of sweat dripping on the grass, arms trembling, ready to give out.

Jared walks away.

He thinks of the days he lost count of.

 _If he had reacted faster, if he hadn’t given in –_ _if Jensen hadn’t been assigned to his team…_

The last touches of the afternoon sunlight melt against his back. He lets his recruits suffer through a few more push-ups.

“Get up,” he orders, voice returning to a normal register.

They don’t, for a second. They stay on their knees, breathing hard, squinting against the sun, looking at their merciless Drill Sergeant.

They have no idea how much worse the enemy will be.

“I expect better from you in the morning.” Jared pauses to let it sink in. “You’re dismissed.”

– _but he hadn’t. And he did. And Jensen was._

Everett and Ford nod. _Yessir._ They salute. And they’re gone.

Jared’s alone again. Just him, the sun, and the training ground. Voices. Soldiers celebrating an end to the mandatory activities of the day. _Routine_. _Familiar._

But – not really.

Something’s missing.

Pieces of himself, splinters left among the sands of a desert in Afghanistan.

 

~

 

_She watches him. Doesn’t ever lose focus on his eyes. Not for a second._

_That’s when Jared realizes she’s ready, that she’s been waiting, and she can handle anything he says._

_And it becomes a choice where he thought he had none. A choice as hard as putting a mercy bullet into his friend’s head. But a choice, nonetheless._

_So Jared stops fighting. His body follows the command, slumps back into the couch. But his eyes stay locked on Dr. Cortese’s dark brown ones._

_“God…I don’t want to remember that.” He takes a deep breath. It helps, gives him more time, softens the words that are to come. “It’s so many things…so much happened on that mission. And so much after, because of it.”_

_He doesn’t want to go there. He doesn’t want to remember._

_Jensen’s eyes. Wide in surprise when everything goes to hell in a handbasket._

_Chris. Pieces of skin, spray of blood._

_That’s what he remembers, what he wants to forget from that time._

_He speaks, voice loud enough to cover the images in his head._

_“I made a choice…I made a choice fully conscious, fully aware of what was happening. I thought…I thought I’d die.”_

_Curtains closed. Led Zeppelin,_ In my time of dying _. Gone._

_Jared hadn’t thought beyond that._

_He hadn’t banked on living, and becoming another man._

 

_~_

 

Jensen’s warm to the touch. Jared runs fingers along the stubbly jawline, secures his hand to the motionless fingers.  Time ceases to be, the turbulent path of his thoughts calming down with the touch, becoming sluggish water passing through Jared’s mind.

He tells Jensen all his secrets.

Jared lays down his weapons, and places his head on the pillow next to Jensen’s.

 

_~_

 

They talk about death. The doctors. Steve. Aldis. They ask all about the what-ifs.

But Jared knows. He knows that Jensen’s coming back.

That’s what they do.

They fight.

They fight to get to each other again. 

 

~

 

_“It’s easy to slip into something you’ve practiced so many years. Say your name. Serial number. The oath. Whatever gets you through the torture. You find something or somewhere else. You compartmentalize.”_

_Genevieve nods, features carefully neutral. Jared continues, uncertain that he could stop._

_“…but that’s not the whole story. It was Jensen’s eyes – that soft green, that – look in his eyes every time he saw me. That took over. I couldn’t – no matter how much I tried, he was still there. And he willed me to fight. And when it fucking hurt, when I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore, that it had to stop – he was there. He was telling me that it’s worth living. Staying on the same side, with him. One more. One day. One hour. One minute. Even when I was numb, I felt him…I felt his whispers into my ear. My arms – I couldn’t feel my arms. Hanging from them too long. But I still felt his chest pressed against my back, like a ghost making me promise to keep going.”_

_There’s silence. Nothing. Diffuse light bounces off the white walls._

_And Jared lets fragments of memories fight their way out._

_“They left me there for so long…I couldn’t tell time anymore.”_

_So many nightmares, hours that he couldn’t tell whether they belonged to day or night._

_“I was so fucking scared. God,” Jared says, running a hand over his face, ice cold, shaking, “I was so…desperate. I felt so alone. Alone with all the shit in my mind.”_

_He doesn’t know when his voice breaks. When he stops talking._

_There’s a spot on the doctor’s desk, next to the desk lamp. A paperweight. Jared looks at it for a long time._

_“Sergeant?”_

_“…I get it, Doc. But you have to know that it isn’t that easy.”_

_“What isn’t easy, Sergeant?”_

_“Living with it. Living with the fact that I lived.”_

_She smiles, softly, sadly._

_“Pain was easier. Punishment felt better than believing. It was here, this. But hope – ”_

_It still feels wrong, it still feels like a foreign side of him, and yet, one rooted in the most basic instinct: surviving._

_Genevieve waits. For seconds, or minutes, Jared doesn’t know._

_“Hope, Jared, is hard – believing there’s something beyond the pain and the suffering. And only those strong enough can find it in themselves.”_

_Maybe he had enough hope to survive then._

_But where does he find the hope for Jensen now?_

 

~

 

It’s a stormy Wednesday afternoon,  the rhythmic sound of raindrops hitting the window sill and thunder rumbling.

Jared’s there, beside the hospital bed, in a chair, still and unseeing.

He should’ve been training. But the storm –

Jared feels the movement of fingers lightly touching the hand he has resting on the bed. He doesn’t turn towards Jensen. He closes his eyes, lets the tears fall freely.


End file.
